How to repair lawn?

[DannyRowntree]

Hi, 

I am looking to repair my lawn, which you can see is in quite a state, and was wondering on which option you'd recomment:

1. From what I can tell, it's Kikuyu grass, do I stick with that and try to reseed and repain the dead patches and create a new patch next to the small decking?

2. Dig it all up, start fresh and lay with new pre-grown turf (like Sir Walter Buffalo)

Cheers,
Danny

[JacobZ]

Hi @DannyRowntree,

Thank you for your question and welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community, it is fantastic to have you with us.

I can't say for sure what species of grass you have but it looks like it could be kikuyu. 

If you were to go with option 1, you would need to aerate and level the patches where no grass is growing as it appears they are low spots where water sits, killing any grass that is there.

I think option 2 is better as it will allow you to level the whole area and start fresh with guaranteed ground cover.

Allow me to tag @Dave-1, @Nailbag and @TedBear to see what they think.

Jacob

[Dave-1]

Good Evening @DannyRowntree 

I havnt had a good run of regrown dead areas of grass, The patch I re-seeded has taken 2 years? ish to come back to being passable and still it is almost half weeds lol

Id be tempete dto go with dig out, level and prep the area as it does seem compacted a fair bit as @JacobZ noticed.

Before you do tho.... I can see an edge to a deck and a raised garden bed. If you want a green flat area then yeah id grass it. If you are trying to make an area nice again, maybe thinking about another garden bed? Bark mulch to cover the area? Break up that far concrete and extend grass or a garden area even?

Dave

[Nailbag]

Hi @DannyRowntree at this time of year this type of lawn will start to take off. But those dead spots appear to be low areas holding water/moisture and also look compacted. So, I would use a metal rake to deeply scratch up the surface in a criss-cross pattern then fill with a top-dressing. You can repurpose small cutouts of good lawn and reposition them in the dead areas to speed up the regrowth areas. Bottom line is agreeing with @JacobZ and keep what you have and work to restore it.

Nailbag